


A Generation Lost

by Sophia_the_Scribe



Series: The Scribe's Poesy [30]
Category: All Quiet on the Western Front
Genre: Gen, Poetry, Tragedy, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:08:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28994982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_the_Scribe/pseuds/Sophia_the_Scribe
Summary: A poem for the Lost Generation, as described in what has been called the greatest war novel of all time.
Series: The Scribe's Poesy [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1182590
Kudos: 1





	A Generation Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Erich Maria Remarque's World War I novel _All Quiet on the Western Front_ , set to the meter/rhyme scheme of Wilfred Owen's World War I poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est."

How would it change me, I have asked, to see  
Amid the blood a generation lost?  
Why is that war forgotten when to be  
Among them was to pay so high a cost?  
From death-infested filth of trenches’ mud  
To bomb-rent desolated No Man’s Land  
They hear a plea where dying choke on blood,  
But none can find them, none can lend a hand.  
The shells so scream that veterans know their signs,  
But young recruits fall heedless to the blast;  
The scouts are trapped in ever-changing lines,  
And hear the bloody hacks from soldiers gassed.  
O fearful spectacle! Why must they die?  
What glorious purpose has their ill-fate served?  
Why were they sent with such a dangerous lie  
By cowards to a horror undeserved?  
The generation lost—so many shot,  
Blown up, stabbed, gassed, with ever-cheapening life,  
Yet even one who drew not this fell lot  
Is lost amid his home by dreadful strife.  
How have the battle-trenches come to seem  
So much more real than what once was all  
They knew? How could men, brought to this extreme,  
Return again the same, though did not fall?  
Alas! First to the war in filth and grime,  
With life and soul to ravaging renders tossed,  
And now to history’s mist and rolling time,  
A generation lost.


End file.
